Series History: Bucs-Falcons

Atlanta's win in the Georgia Dome four weeks ago knotted up a series that has been contested since 1977 and has grown heated on occasion

Tampa Bay's Week 17 win in Atlanta last season – against a 13-2 Falcons team that did notrest its starters despite having the NFC's first-overall playoff seed locked down – was viewed as a boost for the Buccaneers heading into 2013, and understandably so. A second-half stumble in 2012 had followed a promising 6-4 start, but the Bucs believed their season-ending performance was an indication that they would be battling the defending division champs for the crown the next season.

Instead, it's the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers who are battling for NFC South supremacy while the 1-8 Buccaneers once again focus on a turnaround. Surprisingly, the injury-plagued Falcons are in the Bucs' neighborhood in the standings, falling to 2-7 after averaging 11 wins over the previous five seasons. Tampa Bay and Atlanta meet again on Sunday at Raymond James Stadium – their 41st time sharing a field – and it should be a hotly-contested game despite the teams' records. To put it mildly, there is no love lost between the Buccaneers and the Falcons, and as last season's Week 17 matchup demonstrated, the standings often do not dictate the victor.

-- Atlanta's win in a hard-fought Week Seven game evened the all-time Bucs-Falcons series at 20-20

Moreover, the all-time lead in the series will be up for grabs on Sunday. Atlanta's Week Seven win in the Georgia Dome – another hard-fought game that eventually went to the home team, 31-23 – tied things up at 20 wins apiece. That marks the eighth different time in this back-and-forth series that one team has forged a tie with a victory. Barring an actual tie of Sunday's game, one team will be back in front until the series is renewed in 2014.

The two teams first met late in 1977, when the Buccaneers were still in the midst of the franchise-opening 26-game losing streak that spanned most of their first two seasons. Atlanta won, 17-0, but the Buccaneers would get their first victory in New Orleans in two weeks later and close out with two in a row. Early in 1978, Tampa Bay was clearly turning a corner, and a Week Four meeting at Tampa Stadium produced a 14-9 Bucs victory, just the team's second ever win at home.

The Bucs were 7-2 and on their way to their first playoff berth a year later when the Falcons, who would finish just 6-10, pulled of a 17-14 upset. Contrastingly, in 1981, the Bucs made the playoffs for a second time by winning four of their last five to finish 9-76, and the closest decision in that string was a 24-23 home win over Atlanta. The Falcons led by six in the fourth quarter before Doug Williams hit Kevin House for a 71-yard go-ahead touchdown, and the win was sealed when Atlanta kicker Mick Luckhurst missed a 45-yard field goal with four seconds to play. "We just got beat today by a football team that out-executed us," said Atlanta Head Coach Leeman Bennett after the game. "I can't say anything but good things about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They are a fine football team. They executed when they had to and scored when they had to. I can't do anything but heap praise on them and their staff."

Five years later, Bennett would be head coach of the Buccaneers, as he replaced the retired John McKay in 1985. The Bucs won just four of 32 games during Bennett's tenure, and a 23-20 loss to the Falcons in September of 1986 was the first of two straight defeats in overtime, the only time that has happened in franchise history. Not surprisingly, the Bucs had a new coach, Ray Perkins, in place to start the 1987 season and the very first thing his team did was demolish the Falcons on opening day, 48-10. QB Steve DeBerg, in his first of two stints with Tampa Bay (he would also later suit up briefly for the Falcons), threw five touchdown passes in that contest, a Buc record that would later be tied (by Brad Johnson and Josh Freeman) but never surpassed. Coincidentally, Atlanta was also the victim in the Buccaneers' last win under Perkins, late in the 1990 season. The Bucs won that game, 23-17, on a 35-yard touchdown pass from Vinny Testaverde to Mark Carrier with 39 seconds left, but it wasn't enough to save Perkins' job as the team used a late bye week to replace him with Richard Williamson.

If there were hurt feelings by those two Buccaneer wins under Perkins, they escalated in the early '90s when both teams brought in colorful head coaches, Jerry Glanville in Atlanta and Sam Wyche in Tampa Bay. Glanville and Wyche had already crossed paths for years in the old AFC Central, with Glanville piloting the Houston Oilers and Wyche at the helm of the Cincinnati Bengals, and there was apparently no love lost between the two. Wyche's Bengals running up the score in a 61-7 win over Glanville's Oilers in 1989 may have had something to do with that. Glanville's Falcons drubbed Williamson's Buccaneers, 43-7, in 1991, and then poured it on again the next year in a 35-7 victory in Tampa. That was Wyche's first year as head coach in Tampa, and during the offseason he had cut linebacker Jesse Solomon, who took the move personally. Solomon ended up with the Falcons and Glanville fanned the flames of the rivalry by letting Solomon play on offense late in the blowout, even giving him two handoffs that he turned into 12 yards.

Deion Sanders also played on offense late in that game as another dig at Wyche by Glanville, but when the teams met again the next year, Sanders was prominently featured for a different reason. The Hall of Fame-bound cornerback was surprisingly beaten for two long touchdowns by Bucs WR Horace Copeland, keying a 31-24 Tampa Bay win. The Buccaneers' rise in the second half of the 1990s was not matched by a renaissance in Atlanta, which led to Tampa Bay handily winning the last three matchups before the two teams became fellow NFC South denizens in 2002.

Since the South was formed, the Falcons have won 12 of the 23 meetings. The Bucs swept in 2002, 2005 and 2007, each time helping propel Tampa Bay to division titles. Atlanta swept in 2006, 2009 and 2010, though only that final year was followed by a Falcons division title. The Falcons have won eight of the last 10 in the series.

The best games in the series since the creation of the NFC South, at least from the Buccaneers' perspective, occurred in 2002, 2005 and 2012. In '02, the Buccaneers were on their way to their first Super Bowl title, but they had a high-profile December matchup with the streaking Falcons and their new star quarterback, Michael Vick. The Bucs' defense completely stifled Vick in that game, especially on the ground, and won 34-10 to essentially wrap up the division title. In '05, the Bucs were on the verge of following out of division title contention – and maybe the playoffs altogether – when they went to overtime against the Falcons at Raymond James Stadium in Week 16. A fumble on the opening kickoff in the extra period set Atlanta up for a chip shot field goal to win it but DE Dewayne White blocked the kick and the Bucs eventually won with their own field goal, 27-24, at the very end of overtime. Last season, the Buccaneers stumbled into the Georgia Dome in Week 17, having lost five in a row after that 6-4 start, but finished strong with a 22-17 win over the division champs.